Most Popular

Most Recent

ADM-7.03 - Council Documents Redaction / Non-Disclosure Policy

COUNCIL DOCUMENTS REDACTION / NON-DISCLOSURE POLICY

Administrative Rule Adopted by the City Auditor Pursuant to Rule-Making Authority

ARB-ADM-7.03

The Auditor’s Office is committed to providing timely, accurate, and complete documents, minutes and video recordings of Council proceedings. These documents and recordings are made available to the public in their original and unedited form, with scrivener’s changes deemed necessary by the Council Clerk for consistency and conformity to City standards for such documents. Changes made by the Council Clerk do not alter the content of the document in any way.

However, there are a limited number of situations that may warrant deviation from this general policy:

1. Communications or other speech by members of the public who are testifying before Council may only be edited in order to protect the identity of an underage or sexual assault victim, or if other information is disclosed during either written or oral testimony that is confidential (i.e. social security numbers, health information, etc). In such cases:

• The request must be made in writing by the party seeking to redact or amend the Council video or minutes, or by direction of the City Auditor.

• Discretion over whether to redact lies with the City Auditor.

• The redacted content should only be the identifying information and all other words should remain in their original form.

• Video and live captioning posted to the website should have the audio muted or scrubbed to remove the identifying words, and the captioning accompanying the video should be blurred.

• When minutes from the meeting are complete, the Clerk will create two copies: the first will be the official record of the meeting, will remain in its unedited form, and will reside in Efiles with restricted access. The second will have identifying information redacted and will be the copy that is publicly available and linked on the website to Efiles.

An individual may submit a written request to a public body not to disclose a specified public record indicating the home address, personal telephone number or electronic mail address of the individual. A public body may not disclose the specified public record if the individual demonstrates to the satisfaction of the public body that the personal safety of the individual or the personal safety of a family member residing with the individual is in danger if the home address, personal telephone number or electronic mail address remains available for public inspection.

In such cases:

• The written request must contain sufficient information to determine whether personal or family member safety is at risk if the document is disclosed.

• Per statute, a request for nondisclosure of this information remains in effect for five years after the public body receives the request, unless the public body receives a request for termination. Similarly, an individual may make another request for nondisclosure at the end of the five-year period.

• The redaction techniques described in #1 above may be applied to the above safety-related non-disclosure requests.

• Determination for whether a request meets the standard outlined in the statue will be made by the City Auditor.